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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Thursday December 26, 2013.
Israeli settler injures a Palestinian child while soldiers destroy far lands and kidnap a number of civilians during attacks targeting West Bank communities. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Palestinian sources announced that a Palestinian child was injured on Thursday afternoon after he was hit by an Israeli settler car near Salfit city in the northern part of the West Bank.
Ibraheem Abu Zied, 11 years old, from Dier Istyia village near Salfit, sustained critical wounds and was moved to an Israeli hospital for treatment. The sources added that the settler hit the child and fled the scene.
Also on Thursday afternoon, Israeli soldiers invaded the city of Bethlehem, southern West Bank, and kidnapped four civilians among them a child.
According to local sources invading troops opened fire at residents homes in down town Bethlehem city and searched homes before kidnapping Mohamed Soman, 13, and his father Abed Al Salam in addition to two other men.
Earlier on Thursday morning, the Israeli army has destroyed dozens of dunams of agricultural land, south of the West Bank town of Qalqilya, according to witnesses.
Witnesses say that the Israeli army brought heavy machinery to uproot almond, citrus and olives trees in the area, and to level land in a part of the town adjacent to the segregation wall. The soldiers have prevented farmers and landowners from reaching that area.
In other news, and for the 63rd time, Israeli forces have demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib, in the Negev, Thursday morning.
Local sources said that bulldozers, escorted by 25 police patrols, raided the village at 9 a.m. and demolished all of its steel houses. Bedouins claim that they are living in their ancestral lands, while Israel considers al-Araqib and all Bedouin villages in the Negev illegal.
There are about 260,000 Bedouin in Israel, mostly living in and around the Negev. More than half live in unrecognized villages without utilities, with many living in extreme poverty.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Thursday December, 26, 2013 news round-up from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For more news and updates please visit our web site at www.imemc.org. Today’s report has been brought to you by George Rishmawi and me Ghassan Bannoura.
